Falling in Love with the Future The future and I have had a rocky
eyesight and a desperate urge to fit in (add to
relationship. It shouldn’t come as much of a
that mix being the new girl ten different times in
surprise since we’ve been dealing with each other
ten different schools.) So ideas about who I could
for as long as I can remember, and anything that
be habitually drew me into daydreams. In them,
old must be a little worn. My mom always says
future me had no concerns about money,
that the younger you start loving someone, the
independence, or even confidence. Unfortunately
more you go through the aches and pains of
this was no feminist statement of strength and
growing with each other. It’s a solid thought on
self-love. No. Younger me imagined the future as
relationships and I think it fits here, even if my
some big romantic plot and I’d encountered no
partner is that slippery concept of tomorrow.
stories to prove otherwise. From the moment I
When I was younger, it was infatuation at its best. The future offered me only sweet nothings--countless ideas about how the next day would be better than the one before. Although, in all honesty, it took very little to convince me that good things were just around the corner. By the time I started seriously considering the future, the
32
By Samantha Marie Gamez
saw Danny Zuko fall in love with a revamped Sandy and I read how a teen girl could make a vampire with big hair swoon, the future was singular and it was solely composed of being somebody to somebody. Tomorrow I would fall in love and nothing else would matter. If not tomorrow, then the day after.
world had already handed me a nomadic lifestyle,
Needless to say, imagining a future love
and a double dose of adversity. The kind that
affair did not make it my reality. Obsessing over
comes with being a brown-skinned girl with poor
stolen glances and hunting for hidden meanings
